We could call this one “The education episode”, as we spent a lot of time talking about that. How teachers occupy an exalted position in the social strata from which they exert the kind of moral gravitas around which movements, rebellions or general strikes can form.
Alongside that, upper middle class types are exhibiting that spontaneous order we think characterizes decentralized initiatives and hiring tutors to run informal group classes. The lower layers of the socio-economic classes don’t have that luxury, so there’s another fracture along which inequality manifests.
Charles has spent a lot of time thinking about the end of formal education and described a lot of it in his 2013 book “The Nearly Free University and the Emerging Economy: The Revolution in Higher Education”
(I already regret the way I phrased the dichotomy I face around education and my daughter, in retrospect I could have articulated that far better, i.e. the tension between reinforcing a healthy respect for gearing up for university, while somehow preparing her for the reality of the new job outlook and the extinction of traditional career paths.)
We also talked about Universal Basic Income, which seems to be in the early innings of having arrived, but surely it will come with strings attached: eventually there will be expiry dates on funds and probably a prohibition against savings. UBI will devolve into being a kind of “company scrip” that the lower classes get paid with for perpetuating (through consumption) The Company Store (see my Jackpot Chronicles #3: The Great Bifurcation).
There is a chance that small and independent businesses could band together in loose, self-organizing networks, and a CLIME-like system could provide the scaffolding for that.
Charles made the point that the government can get away with all sorts of horrible, toxic programs (like the Vietnam War) almost indefinitely, until they lose the support of the middle and upper-middle classes, if so, what is the catalyst for that to happen today? That brought us full circle back to the unraveling failure of the educational system.
Episode Transcript: AxisofEasy_14_transcript
With Covid-19, the general lockdown approach may well have been counterproductive. The spring 1918 lockdowns had the perverse effect of making the autumn 1918 wave more virulent. There was much more excuse for it in 1918 because that pandemic affected young adults as well as older people.
In the case of Covid-19, an unfocussed general lockdown was wholly unjustified.
Big cities that were badly hit by Covid-19 early (like London UK or New York City), probably have so little circulating virus right now, that false positive tests would swamp true positives.
Given the above, the remark about people attending bars unmasked may not be appropriate. A lot depends on the age and general health of the attendee. Young fit people shouldn’t worry. It may even be advantageous for them to get the disease and build soem community resistance. Older people need to be a little more careful.
One question to be asked is why the rush to a suppression policy versus a management policy? It reminds me of the saying, “War is the health of the state.”
Jobaggedon: With the new emerging feudalism, one wonders, what is the point?
In older feudalisms, the production surplus was modest and so a lavish life-style required the effective enslavement of large chunks of the population.
This new feudalism is the result of a huge productive surplus of material things. Very few people are needed to maintain even very lavish levels of consumption. How long will it take the gazillionaires to realise that turning everyone else into serfs is pointless?
I love the big picture thinking that evolves from these conversations -it gives me hope, to have a view. I like how Anne Applebaum speaks to discussing with the others who view the situation differently. She even says that we will get the end result that we discuss, and formalize. It’s so heart warming to sit here, in spain, and listen to you guys. It makes me more interested in life, and more fully alive. That to me, is why I listen.